


Last Slide

by Nabielka



Category: BrzydUla
Genre: F/F, Skumbrie w tomacie, canonical and past canonical pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 03:36:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16653532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: Paulina kisses like Marek had. Perhaps Julia should have expected that.





	Last Slide

Paula’s lips were as slick as they were shiny. There was still the aftertaste of champagne in the taste of her mouth. 

It was likely to be the last they drank together. She and Marek might be able to reminisce about their affair, to think with affection towards their younger selves that they had been young and rather foolish, and to talk of it as part of another life altogether, like something done by other people. When feelings faded, so did a sense of justification, of responsibility. But she and Paula… Marek and Paula… there could never come to be that feeling of commonality between them.

They had not seen each other in six years. Julia had thought herself happy; certainly she had been successful. The sense of being alone had crept up on her, unnoticed and unacknowledged, until it hit her with a strength that startled her. The English made for poor substitutions. Then Marek’s email had come. 

He had written with warmth, which he had never struggled with, written about their friendship and about the others and about the firm. From afar, it was easy to envisage it as resuming the closeness of their student days, save that they had grown up and were now employed. Certain things, now long over, would never interfere; neither of them were of the type to be wracked with guilt.

It was consequences she feared, the humiliation of it thrown back at her, the inevitable sundering of relations that would follow. Aleks knew. Inconceivably, impossibly, Aleks knew. 

From that, it could only be a matter of time before Paulina would know. Gone would be the easy touches Paulina bestowed upon her, gone would be the clear joy that had branched on Paula’s face when she had come into Marek’s office to see her. And yet it was inevitable: his manner towards herself had changed, but Julia could not think that his attitude towards his sister could have been so altered. Even before they had dated, when she had first met them – for having met Marek, it was inevitable that she should shortly be introduced to the Febo siblings – his affection and care for her had been easily apparent. So long as Julia had stayed away, it seemed he had been willing enough to keep his tongue behind his teeth for the sake of Paula’s happiness. But he hated her; more to the point, he did not trust her. She could again threaten his sister’s felicity; her presence had already destroyed his. 

She was not exactly threatening it now, save perhaps insofar as it affected Paula’s conscience. For all her proud words to Julia about how Marek had changed and how in love they were, the pointed flash of her ring, she had not pushed Julia away at the first touch of their lips. 

If she had given it any thought, Julia might have considered that Paulina would kiss like Aleks had, that they would have that in common as much as the gloss of their hair or a certain twist to their smile when it did not come genuinely. Instead, the way Paula kissed only made her think of Marek and the way his tongue had moved in her mouth. She wondered if Paulina had the same impression from her, or if her own style was too muddled with the impression of Aleks, of Steve the Englishman, or a couple others she had pressed herself against in the intervening years. In some ways, despite the long separation, she felt more entangled with them now than ever. 

But she hadn’t considered it. When looking at pictures of them together, she had at times caught herself in looking as much at Paulina as she did at Marek. She had always explained it away. There was no resentment in her, but still Paulina had replaced her in Marek’s life, which in itself would have been enough to draw Julia’s interest and attention. It went beyond that; Paulina was her friend and generally acknowledged to be a woman worth looking at. 

Julia had not remembered the smell of Paula’s perfume as Paula pulled her into an embrace, the feeling of her lips on her cheek, the touch of her hand on her arm. She was sure it had not been so distracting before, sure that if so, she would have remembered it and thought of it. Instead, she had thought only a little of pressing herself up against Marek again, of feeling his hand curve around her hip, or of Aleks, who had broken up with her so suddenly but who nevertheless came out favourably in comparison to her most recent boyfriend, having curved his mouth into a smile at the sight of Julia and not only at his bank account. 

In some ways it seemed almost inevitable; Paulina was the only one she hadn’t kissed. What a shame that this too, like Marek or Aleks, had no hope of enduring; what a shame that this too was something for which the consequences were due to catch up with Julia.

**Author's Note:**

> Uczucia - Emigracja


End file.
